Log inSign up
Matthew Barnett
10.4K posts
user avatar
Matthew Barnett
@MatthewJBar
Co-founder of @MechanizeWork Married to @natalia__coelho email: matthew at mechanize dot work
San Francisco, CA
mechanize.work
Joined June 2020
391
Following
8,926
Followers
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Sep 27, 2025
    Twin and adoption studies consistently show that parenting choices have minimal effects on a kid's eventual intelligence, personality, or happiness (except in cases of extreme neglect or abuse). This should revolutionize how we raise children, yet almost nobody knows or cares.
    232K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Jul 19, 2023
    A new LLM truthfulness benchmark just dropped. (Context: Alabama in fact has a higher per capita GDP than Japan.)
    249K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Dec 20, 2022
    There's been a lot of low quality GPT-4 speculation recently. So, here's a relatively informed GPT-4 speculation thread from an outsider who still doesn't know that much. 🧵
    615K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Aug 19, 2025
    If you give people cash and they choose to spend it on a bunch of junk rather than on education or healthcare, one way to interpret that result is that marginal spending on education and healthcare is worth less than a bunch of junk.
    user avatar
    The Argument
    @TheArgumentMag
    Aug 19, 2025
    The "cash can replace" a strong social safety net people taking a real L this morning.
    57K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Feb 17, 2023
    I have no dislike for philosophers, but the profession did not prepare us well for AI. The field is full of muddled thinking, abysmal takes like the Chinese Room Argument, a focus on pointless vague inquiries over big picture questions, and is often detached from actual AI.
    113K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Dec 26, 2024
    I wish people made their predictions falsifiable. Robin Hanson has been saying that the current AI boom will bust since at least 2016, but AI has rapidly gotten better over that entire time frame, with correspondingly more investment and attention. When can we say he was "wrong"?
    user avatar
    Robin Hanson
    MetaDAO
    @robinhanson
    Dec 25, 2024
    Replying to @robinhanson
    The current burst of AI activity will likely fade, as have many bursts before, before the future burst when AI actually takes over the world. Something else will be the "big thing" between future AI bursts.
    29K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Aug 4, 2023
    I personally think $20 a month is cheap when the benefit is knowing whether a fundamental claim in your field is valid (and in this case, the claim is approximately not valid).
    64K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Nov 15, 2025
    Why do so many people think that humans don't trade with animals because we're way more powerful than them, rather than because they can't talk or keep agreements? Do they think cats, mice, and ants really couldn't do anything useful for us if we could coordinate with them?
    39K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Mar 29, 2023
    I currently think this open letter is quite bad, and possibly net harmful. The proposed policy appears vague and misguided. I want to explain some of my thoughts. 🧵
    Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter - Future of Life Institute
    From futureoflife.org
    181K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Oct 3, 2023
    Why are some people still treating AGI as a thing that will at some point "be invented"? At this point, doesn't it seem pretty clear that AIs will just get continuously more general and capable with no clear finish line?
    41K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Apr 6, 2022
    Most rankings of the top causes of death can be misleading, since they count someone dying at 20 the same as someone dying at 90. When you weight by life-years lost, you get this ranking (as of 2015). From ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Mar 25, 2023
    How it feels to read stories about how an AGI can take over the world.
    37K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    Aug 21, 2025
    It's frustrating when people say "AI progress is too fast" while over 100,000 people still die from aging per day, with no sign of abating. It's like we're in a huge, deadly war and people say our leaders are rushing to agree to a peace settlement. No, they should go even faster.
    79K
  • user avatar
    Matthew Barnett
    @MatthewJBar
    May 9, 2023
    Here's a line of reasoning for AI doom I've seen before that seems bad: 1. The first AGI will be able to end the world via nanotech 2. I can't explain exactly how it could do that 3. But (2) doesn't matter, because an AGI will be much smarter than me, and will figure it out
    63K

New to X?

Sign up now to get your own personalized timeline!

Create account

By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, including Cookie Use.

Terms of Service|Privacy Policy|Cookie Policy|Accessibility|Ads info|© 2026 X Corp.
Don't miss what's happening
People on X are the first to know.
Log inSign up